Moshe Yanovskiy (Gaidar Institute): Rebuilding the Democracy of the Taxpayer. From the inaugural issue of Symposium Magazine: Where Academia Meets Public Life, Carnegie Mellon’s Ariel D. Procaccia on how game theory is useful, except when it is not; how do bad numbers get into circulation in our political discourse, and how do they stay there, even after being refuted? Columbia’s Andrew Gelman investigates; and Rice’s Rick K. Wilson on the war on social science: Congress is heading into dangerous territory as it decides what basic scientific research should be. From Foreign Affairs, Adam Posen reviews The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire by Neil Irwin; and Brad DeLong reviews After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead by Alan S. Blinder. From Edge, who and/or what as fresh and new at Sci/Foo 2013? Meet Reggie Walton, the chief justice of America’s secret supreme court. Why are testicles kept in a vulnerable dangling sac? It’s not why you think. Stuart A. Reid on the education of Rand Paul: In today’s GOP, he’s what passes for moderate. Roger Berkowitz on misreading Eichmann in Jerusalem: Hannah Arendt's dispatches from Adolf Eichmann's trial did not portray him as a robotic bureaucrat, but as a fanatical “joiner” convinced he was serving a higher good. Truckin’: Chris Bertram on ten years of the blog Crooked Timber.
